Gasoline is made from crude, but prices for the two have become oddly disconnected. That could help drivers, at least in the short term. Despite crude's record, most market analysts don't expect another gasoline price spike this summer like the one in spring.

"Absent any major hurricane, we don't see any return to the high gas prices we had earlier this year," said Douglas MacIntyre, senior oil market analyst with the federal Energy Information Administration.

The national average for a gallon of regular gasoline now stands at $2.87, down 9 cents in the past month, according to the AAA auto club. California's average is $3.06, down 10 cents in the past month.

Many analysts predict that gasoline's declining price could soon be matched by oil.

They say July's crude oil rally, which pushed prices to a record close of $78.21 per barrel Tuesday on the New York Mercantile Exchange, was based more on speculative trading than anything else. If the price of crude's main product - gasoline - keeps falling, it could help push oil lower.

That logic may have been in evidence Wednesday when the price of contracts to buy crude oil on the New York Mercantile Exchange fell 2.1 percent to close at $76.53, $1.68 below Tuesday's record. (Adjusted for inflation, crude oil's all-time record came in 1981, at roughly $92 per barrel.)

"I think we got up over the old highs, and then people said 'Wait, do we really belong here?' " said Peter Beutel, president of the Cameron Hanover energy risk management firm.

Most of the time, the relationship between crude oil and gasoline seems simple enough. Oil prices rise, followed by gasoline. Oil drops, and gas drops too.

But this spring's spike in gasoline prices, for once, had little to do with the price of crude.

Starting in February, the refineries that turn oil into gasoline suffered an unexpected number of mechanical problems and accidents. That drastically cut the amount of gas being produced. Prices at the pump started rising.

Oil also rose in the early spring, but not at the same rapid rate. When gasoline prices were setting records in April and May, oil prices stayed relatively flat. They didn't start soaring until gas started to decline in June.

Why? The same refinery problems that pushed up gas prices pushed down oil, analysts say. After all, if refineries are broken, they can't use much crude. That means more oil sitting around in storage and lower oil prices.

Most of the refinery problems were fixed in July. Oil started flowing through the refineries again, making crude more valuable. At the same time, several reports on the worldwide oil market showed international demand for petroleum growing at a rapid clip. The traders and speculators who buy and sell oil contracts every day decided to buy.

Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst with the Oil Price Information Service, considers this week's highs the result of market momentum.

"In my view, it's an excessive high at this point in time," he said. "This is about crowd behavior."

United States refineries are now cranking out more gasoline than anytime since Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, according to federal data. If that continues, gas prices should keep easing and eventually bring down oil prices as well, said Brian Milne, editor of DTN MarketWire, an online news service for the wholesale fuel market.